WBSSC recruitment case: Job losers shift spot of agitation, announces future course of protests

Kolkata, April 25 (IANS) Teaching staff who lost their jobs after the Supreme Court's order in connection with the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) recruitment case on Friday announced that they will shift the venue of their protest to Y-channel, a popular agitation spot at Esplanade.

However, the non-teaching staff in Group-C and Group-D categories will continue to protest in front of the WBSSC office for the time being.

While announcing the change of venue for the demonstration, the job losers announced their future course of agitation.

Speaking to the media, the protesters said they would continue their agitation for the next two days and wait for a concrete and transparent proposal from the Commission.

If the commission fails to do so, the job losers will conduct a protest march to Bikash Bhavan, the headquarters of the State Education Department.

They started their sit-in demonstration in front of the WBSSC office on April 21, after the state Education Department and Commission failed to honour their earlier promise of publishing lists segregating "genuine" from "tainted" candidates.

State Education Minister Bratya Basu said that the Supreme Court did not specify anything about the publication of the segregated lists.

Meanwhile, the commission confidentially sent a list of "genuine" candidates to the respective District Inspectors of Schools.

Although not officially announced, information surfaced that a list of 15,403 candidates has been sent to the District Inspector of Schools.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court division bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar upheld the order of the Calcutta High Court's division bench of Justice Debangsu Basak and Justice Shabbar Rashidi last year, cancelling WBSSC's entire 2016 panel of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching jobs.

The Apex Court also accepted the observation of the Calcutta High Court that the entire panel had to be cancelled because of the "failure" on the part of the state government and WBSSC to segregate the "genuine" candidates from the "tainted" ones, who got jobs paying money.

--IANS

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